DPI (dots per inch)

When creating an ad for The Daily Universe, we recommend the following DPI (Dots per inch, or Pixels per Inch) settings:

170 dpi/ppi for grayscale or color images, at the target size or above
400-600 dpi/ppi for bitmap black and white (usually called "line art") graphics, also at the target size or above.

We print graphics in the newspaper using what's called a printing screen. This screen effect (if you look closely at a picture in a newspaper, you can see it's made up of tiny little dots) is created at 85 lines per inch. Generally speaking, dpi settings above 1.5 to 2.0 times the amount of the line screen are recommended for graphic images. Since we use an 85-line screen, we times that by two, and get 170.

For line art images, it takes about 600 dpi until you no longer see the "jaggies" on curves. Since that may create images that are too big to be comfortably e-mailed, you might consider running it at 500 dpi, although in the case of line art, it probably won't be that large. This is the same even if the line art is to be colored in your advertisement. If it's not a photograph, or a drawing that contains gradients (such as pencil art), it's line art, and the higher scan rates apply.

If you are creating an advertisment for one of our glossy publications, such as the BYU Student Directory, pictures should be 300 dpi, for use with a 150-line screen. Line art should be at least 600 dpi.